Pianist Edward Simon’s First Solo Album

Last month Ridgeway Records released Solo Live, the first ever unaccompanied album performed by Venezuelan pianist, composer, arranger, educator, and bandleader Edward Simon. Apparently, the album has been released only for streaming or download. The above hyperlink is to Simon’s home page on Bandcamp. The content is also available from Amazon.com, but there is so much disinformation on the Web page that I figure anyone serious about listening to these tracks will prefer the more accurate information provided by the Bandcamp Info hyperlinks. Presumably, the album will remain on Simon’s Bandcamp home page until his next album is released.

This is Simon’s fifteenth release as a leader. As the title suggests, the five tracks were recorded during a solo concert that Simon presented on his 50th birthday in 2019. The performance took place at the Piedmont Piano Company in Oakland. The recording itself was unedited, and Solo Live is only Simon’s second album documenting a concert.

As a seriously attentive listener, I would say that the album’s only flaw is that it is only about half an hour in duration. That comes down to five tracks, only one of which, “Country,” is Simon’s original composition. The album opens with Billy Strayhorn’s “Lush Life.” This is followed by two Thelonious Monk tunes, “Monk’s Dream” and “Monk’s Mood.” Following “Country” the album concludes with a solo piano reflection on “I Loves You, Porgy,” Bess’ song from George Gershwin’s opera Porgy and Bess.

Simon is consistently imaginative in his approaches to interpretation. “Lush Life” begins with the “turn” embellishment, which is encountered more frequently in the keyboard music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart than in the twentieth-century jazz piano repertoire. Simon’s approach to “Monk’s Dream,” on the other hand, may have been inspired by Benjamin Britten’s Opus 70 “Nocturnal after John Dowland.” Britten composed a set of variations on Dowland’s “Come, Heavy Sleep,” which begins with the most elaborate variation and gradually simplifies the embellishments until the music concludes with the theme itself. Similarly, the “tune” of “Monk’s Dream” only emerges at the end of Simon’s performance.

COVID-19 struck when Simon was curating the 2020 Salon Series for San Francisco Performances. His first three programs presented an engaging blend of repertoire from both the classical and jazz genres. The last program was supposed to feature a performance of Simon’s own composition, Venezuela Suite. Since it was scheduled for April 15, it never happened. Now that we are emerging from pandemic conditions, I am hoping that Simon will provide more listening opportunities here in San Francisco.